The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1887-01-28
SOME STRANGE HANDS.
There Il Great Deal OF Character In
Them IL We Only Knew 1t.


Hands reveal habits, occupations.
trades, says writer in CasSelPs Family
Magazine. A crop Of them rises at the
thought, like the show thrust up from q
crowd in honor of candidate after an
election speech. There is the carpen-
ter's. with the broad thumb, and those of
the fraternity of flour, ingrained, mealy
and white; the musicians, with the
powerful wrist and the fingers delicate,
sensitive and agile to the last degree;
the hand of the seamstress, with an
honorable little bit of nutmeg crater on
the forefinger that works so hard; Of
the scientific man, who lectures to ex-
plain mysteries to lower mortals and
whose exactItude of touch is the image
of his mental precision, while the ner-
vous stretch OF his fingers corresponds
with his tension of mind.
The sleight-of-hand professor is
man of long fingers. A conjurer with a
the awful secrets of the plum pudding
that is taken from the depths Of your
best hat
But beside the character and trade,
the hands tell the age. Soft and round,
the baby's pair of puff-balls, with their
fat wrists deeply ridged, appear as if
they never can do anything in this
world. Yet the girls hand will become
treasure, and the boys hand will
battle for life and with his fellow-men
for the mastery. 1t is appalling to
think Of what those helpless little puff
balls have before them.
After the first dimples they become
the inky hands of school; then the awk-
ward hands that don't know what to do
with themselves. Years pass. the boys
hand ceases to grumble at gloves-yes,
he wears them in extravaganza fresh
ness, in comparison as his collars grow
upward, and his shoes tighten within
an inch of his life. The result of these
phenomena is that ring begins to
shine with charming strangeness on
another hand, that seemed a child's
but yesterday. The young wife tells by
her hands that il is not long since the
wedding. because she can not let that
new ring alone, but twists it around
for the novelty, and admires it with an
unconscious knack of caressing il in
idle moments. Her dimples disappear,
as the children gather to make home
circle; it is the hand of the woman now,
with its very framework traceable.
Dimples, bones and wrinkles mark
the three stages of life's progress. With
the wrinkled stage the steadiness of
youth often remains in resolute char
acters. When the Duke of Wellington
was very old man he could still fill a
glass of water to the last possible drop
and hold it up steadily brimful. The
helpful hands keep their youthful actIv-
ity, too, far into the whitening age
And in nobly-loving natures there is a
sort of Immortality of youth; the
warmth of affection has given more than
royal prerogative; the hand is beauti-
full always to the eyes that know it
Familiarity. The latter years only stamp
it with the impress of longer past of
tenderness and bounty. 1t is not the
"old" hand but the dear" hand, and
it never grows older, but only more
dear. He who doubts the truth of this
last mystery has not yet found out that
hands as we'll as hearts have peculiar
place in our knowledge and love of one
another